A long while back, I sat half asleep on a shaky night bus somewhere in the midst of Malaysia. I had been in Singapore for a few days to renew my visa for Thailand and was heading back north with Bangkok as my final destination.

At some point that night, the bus turned off the highway and pulled into a large parking lot surrounded by jungle and towering, somewhat ominous mountains. I later found out that this rest area was in Cameron Highlands (Malaysian highlands), not far from where American businessman and silk expert Jim Thompson was presumed to have died under unclear circumstances around 1967.

Thirty or forty other colorful long-distance buses were already parked when we pulled in and stopped with a deep sigh between two other Scania buses. There was a crackle from the bus’s speakers, and with a drowsy voice in broken English, the driver asked everyone to leave the bus.

As my fellow passengers and I disembarked, the driver pointed to a small, ramshackle building with a blinking neon sign advertising Malaysian sodapop.

There, he explained with subdued enthusiasm, was where we could buy snacks and drinks, and that behind the building was a shack with several toilets. We were also informed that the bus would depart again in twenty minutes… “and if you are not back in time, we will leave without you”!

I fastened the money belt where I kept my passport, traveler’s checks, and wrinkled vaccination card, pulled my t-shirt over it, and stumbled down the bus’s stairs to get my bearings in the vast parking lot.

On stiff legs, I followed the slow procession of men, women, and children heading towards the kiosk and toilet shack.

I remember how most buses had their headlights on and idling engines, making the ground gently vibrate. The nauseating smell of diesel fumes hung heavily over the entire area. Unpleasant as the dirty air was to breathe, it at least kept the mosquitoes at a reasonable distance.

After finally getting to pee, I got in line for the snack shack to buy something cold to drink and perhaps a pack of crackers, if they had any.

Although I was a bit worried that the bus might leave without me, my thirst was so urgent that there was no way I would be leaving my spot in line until it was my turn at the window.

When I finally reached the counter after about seven or eight minutes, it was a beautiful young woman with a pink hijab and tired eyes who sold me a bottle of lukewarm water. Behind her stood a younger man in a long dark blue tunic. He brought forward all the orders from the back of the shack and handed them to his colleague in front at the window.

I handed over my last Singapore dollars, received the unmarked plastic water bottle, and started walking in the direction where I thought my Bangkok bus was parked.

The thick fog of exhaust seemed to conspire with the headlights just to make it harder for me to find my way. I eventually located my bus and let out a sigh of relief as I boarded, making my way to my window seat just in front of the bus’s rear door. With each passed row along the bus’s dark middle aisle, I heard how the passengers were giggling and laughing.

Were they laughing at me? 

Halfway to my seat, the driver turned on the bus’s ceiling lights. It was only then that I realized that I had really ended up in the wrong place. On every passenger seat sat a Buddhist nun with a shaved head and dressed in pink and white cloth.

I was in the midst of a busload of women who had dedicated their lives to Siddhartha, the enlightened one, Gautama Buddha himself!

With the bus now fully illuminated, all eyes turned to me – the confused, the lost, the guy dressed in a worn-out t-shirt and dirty shorts.

The driver had noticed the comical situation and opened the rear door so that I could make a quick and smooth exit. As I took the final steps out of the bus, I heard all the nuns laughing loudly and joyfully.

With a smile on my face, I continued to look for my bus and probably just minutes before it departed, managed to one with the familiar Singapore-Bangkok sign followed by the numbers 005.

The nuns’ long journey to Nirvana and mine to Bangkok could now continue.

The above photo is from Burma, many years later but contextually close enough to illustrate my bus adventure back in 1989.

Photo: Elle Raboff

It’s the humidity that gets you in Bangkok. Not the exhausts. Not the sun. So it’s the relatively low humidity that makes December such a pleasant month to visit the Thai capital.

Last night, after a full 16k day of walking in and out of malls, jostling with fellow riders in the Skytrain and a taking a ferry across the busy Chao Phraya River, we enjoyed another delicious dinner at an outdoor corner restaurant here in Phrom Phong. We’re now recognized patrons there and once we’d sat down – but before our dinner arrived – I exclaimed with unbridled enthusiasm how wonderfully cool the weather was.

But as soon as our kind waitress presented our food and I had added a few teaspoons of Thai chili to spice my dish up a bit, I started sweating profusely – as if it were April, arguably the hottest, stickiest month of the year here.

Meanwhile, in Osaka…

Japan. Evening. Sayonara.

Just a little while ago I was sipping on a glass of Suntory Soda in our hotel room’s small bathtub. Lying there, I was contemplating our trip how much fun we’d had and all the great food we’d enjoyed. Clearly the most enjoyable trip to Japan so far. And the most affordable. The weak yen makes even the weaker Swedish crown stretch quite far.

Before my bath, we had enjoyed a delicious dinner just a few hundred meters from the airport hotel where we were staying tonight. We’ve got an early flight heading southwest tomorrow, so no Osaka this time around.

For most airport restaurants that I’ve ever visited, this principle applies: not good but expensive.

Tonight’s meal offered the opposite: a delightful dinner for a reasonable price: 185 SEK/person, including a large draft beer each (served, as usual, in chilled mugs).

We couldn’t think of any of our meals in Japan that we hadn’t described with at least one superlative followed by an exclamation mark. Even the convenience store food we’ve had a couple of times has been surprisingly tasty.

Will miss Japanese food. And the heated Japanese toilet seats.

But also the Japanese politeness, friendliness, modesty, and honesty.

There is still a deep-seated sensibility here. But also anxiety or reservation that I think we from Sweden both recognize and quite appreciate. At least people of our generation probably feel that way.

Here, you are treated (and judged) based on how you behave, especially us foreigners, the so-called “Gaijin.” I haven’t bowed so much in a long time. But it felt natural to respond to politeness with at least as much politeness.

Yesterday we ate at Jam, one of Okinawa’s many teppanyaki restaurants where a skilled chef cooks your food in front of you on a massive steel grill.

The first time I had Japanese food was in the mid-1980s seated along a teppanyaki table at Mikado in Gothenburg. Mikado was located above White Corner at that time if anyone remembers that place.

There was a lot of showmanship yesterday, but the chef also made really good food, and the drinks at Jam were not watered down. We even had a bit of interaction with the family from Nagano sitting next to us.

After dinner, everyone around the teppanyaki table was ushered to the restaurant’s lounge area where dessert was served (ice cream and green tea).

It took a while, but the Nagano family couldn’t resist and approached us a bit shyly, asking if they could take a group photo with us in it. We agreed, of course. Much chatter and laughter ensued!

I think it was a full moon as we walked back to the hotel at Moon Beach on Okinawa late last night.

Right now, here in Osaka, it’s raining (not to be confused with Åsaka, where my grandfather Eskil comes from). But it looks like it will be sunny in Bangkok tomorrow afternoon…

Sayonara, Japan, and thanks for a couple of magical weeks!

It sounds strange, but when I’m in Tokyo, I think about Trollhättan, the city where SAAB cars were once made and where I spent formative time with my grandparents as a youngster.

Let me explain.

For about a year, sometime in the early 1970s, I lived with my grandparents Eskil and Agnes Andersson on Örtagårdsvägen 17 in Trollhättan. At the beginning of this nearly year-long stay with them, communication between my grandfather and me was pretty much impossible. His English vocabulary was just as limited as my Swedish. Grandmother Agnes was no linguist, but she had studied basic English at night school for a few semesters.

When my grandfather and I shared breakfasts, there was often silence at the kitchen table. The only sound was the loud slurping noise when my grandfather ate his thick morning porridge or drank coffee from the saucer with a sugar cube between his teeth. He had already done an hour’s work on the farm before sitting down to have breakfast with me.

Grandma Agnes always had a lot to do in the mornings and rarely took the time to eat with us.

After breakfast, my grandfather would retreat to his study, carefully cutting out the TV schedule from the last page of the local newspaper. With his thick, rough fingers holding a black ink pen, he would circle the television shows he planned to watch that evening.

Eskil Andersson was born in 1901 and was not an educated man. I don’t think he had more than six years of schooling. On the other hand, he was very practical, curious, and eager to learn.

He followed the news on TV, listened to the radio, and meticulously read both the regional paper “Göteborgs-Posten” and the farmer’s specialty magazine “Land”.

He never touched grandmother’s stack of weekly magazines. I, on the other hand, enjoyed them for their cartoons. My favorite was “Året Runt” (Year Around), where the cartoon about the delightful anti-hero “Mister Kronblom” was published.

On weekdays, when my grandfather returned from either farming, the stable, or the smithy in the evening, we had dinner together with my grandmother.

If I didn’t have any homework, we would meet again just before the news program “Rapport” aired in his study, where the TV was placed at the far end of a disproportionally large wooden desk (which, as I recall, was covered with light veneer).

There, my grandfather always sat in his creaky, semi-circular wooden chair with armrests and squeaky wheels. He reached the TV’s volume knob and channel selector (two buttons, one for each channel) by grabbing the desk and pulling himself along the floor.

Once he’d found the right program and adjusted the volume level (he was hard of hearing even back then), he pushed the chair back across the floor, took out his pipe, stirred the burnt tobacco in the bowl with an old match, tapped out the ash, and pressed a fresh pinch of Borkum Riff or John Silver into the pipe.

Then Grandpa lit the tobacco with a new match, leaned back in his chair, took a puff, and exhaled smoke through both his nose and one corner of his mouth. I remember being completely fascinated by his pipe ritual.

During these TV evenings with my grandfather, my grandmother would come in after a while with a bowl of carrot sticks or sliced winter apples for me to snack on.

By then, Grandpa’s study was already filled with smoke, and despite being asthmatic, I really liked the scent of tobacco fumes. Today, whenever I see someone with a pipe or smell the aroma of pipe tobacco, my thoughts immediately go back to those lovely moments with my grandfather Eskil.

Ok. Let’s move on to the connection between Tokyo and Trollhättan.

During lunch break one Friday at Lyrfågelskolan in Trollhättan, the school I attended for a semester, the boys in my class were enthusiastically chatting about a monster movie that would be shown on TV later that evening.

I, of course, wanted to see that movie, but I thought it would be difficult to persuade my grandfather to skip the news at 9:00 PM and instead watch “Destroy All Monsters” with “Gojira” (ゴジラ) aka “Godzilla” in the lead role over on the other of Sweden’s two channels.

When I came home in the afternoon with my blue gym bag over my shoulder, I went straight to my grandfather’s study to check which tv shows he had marked for the evening. To my delight, I saw that “Destroy All Monsters” was circled several times, and that the news show “Aktuellt” was even crossed out!

It was later that Friday evening that my then seventy-something grandfather Eskil and I were introduced to Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan, King Ghidorah, Angilas, Minya, and Spiega. And to the city of Tokyo and the mighty Mount Fuji, where part of the film’s exciting plot unfolded.

Here in Okinawa, we don’t hear sirens from police or fire trucks as much as we did in Tokyo last week. But there and then, I often associated those alarming sounds with the old Godzilla movies. And above all, to that very first one that my grandfather and I watched together on the outskirts of Trollhättan back in the early 1970s.

Tokyo. Japan. Evening. Dark (again).

I’m writing this from a minimalist folding table at one end of our tiny but brilliantly designed hotel room. A half-eaten, triangular-shaped egg and tuna sandwich lies untouched on the right side of the computer’s slightly crumbly keyboard.

I just bought the aforementioned, beautifully packaged sandwich at our nearest Lawson (a more luxurious, cleaner, and neater variant of 7/11), where the friendly staff now seems to recognize us after our daily visits. Right now, both Charlotte and I are exhausted and have stocked up for a cozy Sunday evening here in our “incubator” on the 10th floor.

We were provided with plenty of sunshine today and it warmed our cheeks as we walked along the coast in Kanagawa. Kanagawa is probably best known for the woodcut with the great wave by the artist Hokusai.

With us for most of today’s adventure, almost like a painted backdrop, was the iconic Mt. Fuji.

When the commuter train we took from Tokyo Station rolled into the city of Fujisawa after just 40 minutes of travel, we walked with eager steps through the pedestrian street and quickly over the bridge to the island of Enoshima.

Once we had climbed the 254 steep steps to the island’s highest temple area and taken the elevator to the top deck of the observation tower, we were rewarded with a classic view: the sea in the foreground and the almost unbelievably symmetrical, snow-covered Mt. Fuji in the background.

I think we fell in love with Tokyo in 2006 when we were here to shoot and gather impressions for half a dozen travel articles and guides about the Japanese capital for several Swedish travel magazines.

I vividly remember that we scuttled between Shinjuku, Shibuya, Harajuku, Ginza, Asakusa, and Roppongi to gather impressions and visual material. We almost had to buy extra luggage space to bring all the inspiration with us after that visit!

The relationship with Tokyo was strengthened on our next visit in 2015, and now the feelings have come to life again… because just like almost 17 years ago, Tokyo is still incredibly awesome!

The city is grand and small-scale at the same time and always, always interesting: conventional-futuristic, ultra-commercial-meditative, minimalist-extravagant, and decently-perverse. A wonderful contradiction that gripped us then and still hasn’t let go.

Here, I can hardly put my phone down before it goes up again to film or shoot something that has caught my interest. Incidentally, this is the first time I’m in Japan without bringing any other camera than the one in my year-old phone.

Tokyo is still clean, fresh, well-organized, and extremely easy to navigate. Tokyoites are still friendly, polite, and considerate. Not all the new skyscrapers and high-rises are beautiful, but nothing in the city environment or anything else has been left to chance. Everything has its place, and public communication is rather overt than risking being misunderstood. Everything works!

Sure, the Japanese are only marginally better than Thais at stringing external power lines, and the noise level in the subway is sometimes a bit too high. But everything else works so unbelievably well – trains are on time, the mobile data network is super fast, the food is delightfully good and relatively cheap, and you never need to worry about being robbed, assaulted, or deceived.

The weather this November Sunday reminded us of a beautiful Swedish early summer day. After a couple of months of intense heat in Vietnam, it has been really great with Tokyo’s cooler autumn climate. Soon, we’re heading to the country’s southern islands with diving, surfing, and other activities on the agenda.

Sayonara!

We arrived early this morning at Narita International Airport outside of Tokyo, Japan. Since the Vietjet night flight from Saigon/HCMC wasn’t full, both Charlotte and I were able to grab and sleep (fetal position) in a three-seat space.

After checking in at our hotel and getting over the fact that our room is just marginally larger than our bathroom in Malmö, we headed to the nearest convenience store, a Lawson, where we bought all kinds of food to try out.

Top of my list was the above egg salad sandwich that Anthony Bourdain recommended during one of his show’s episodes filmed here in Japan. Unsurprisingly, it was really good. Tonight we’re having sushi with our travel buddy Erik at Sushi-Go-Round deep inside Tokyo Station.